


When the Pavement Crumbles

by KRyn



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 10:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3725434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KRyn/pseuds/KRyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epilogue/Missing Scene to Karma (S04, Ep 17)- John's POV</p><p>The conversation they should have had (IMHO)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Pavement Crumbles

**Author's Note:**

> Rated Mature for M/M established relationship- not explicit
> 
> Spoilers for prior episodes. Knowledge of the Episode Karma is required.
> 
> This is the conversation I think should have taken place at the end of the episode. The boys were hard on each other in this one--very much (to me) a call back to Season 1, when secrets and assumptions impaired their ability to communicate.

When Harold and Bear came into view, the hard knot that had been twisting in my chest since we'd awkwardly parted company the previous evening finally started to relax its stranglehold.

Dapper as always, Finch was dressed for the sunny but brisk weather, tailored--even if not bespoke--wool overcoat, fedora set firmly on his head against the cold, angled with a slightly rakish slant. Bear paced at his side, head swiveling, ears perked, his 'alert' posturing a better barometer of his master's true feelings than what Harold physically displayed. 

My partner wore what I had long ago dubbed his 'public' face: expression bland but polite, giving no true indication of the emotions shuttered behind the practiced mask. As they walked toward me, I noted a slightly more pronounced limp and a tighter set to Harold's shoulders than usual--no surprise, given the way the last few days had gone. 

I wasn't sure though, how much of that tension was due to the Number we'd just concluded--if you call leaving the case with questions still unanswered, 'closed'--or if it was the result of the ugly memories that had resurfaced for both of us. 

Or, if was because I'd managed to screw up the most important relationship I'd ever had. 

Harold caught sight of me and offered the barest tip of his head in acknowledgement. As they came abreast of where I waited, I slid into place next to Finch, matching my pace to his as I'd done so many times before. Bear butted me playfully in welcome and Harold ducked his head slightly, lip twitching upward in a faint smile for a brief moment. 

It wasn't a guarantee that all was well, or forgiven, but it offered the hope that I hadn't fucked up too badly, and that I'd have the chance to make amends.

No words were exchanged as we followed the path down to the waterfront. The lack of conversation wasn't unusual. While it's true that Finch enjoys the beauty of the spoken word almost as much as he loves the written, he understands the value of silence. 

Silence, especially between people who are comfortable with each other, has a quality and a dimension of its own. It allows you to draw a breath, settle, find your balance. 

There's an intensity that Finch exudes when he's in quiet mode, which simultaneously grounds and frees me. His acceptance of my lingering near on days when there was no Number had been my first clue that I was having a similar effect on him. 

Companionship had grown to something more. 

Something precious.

Something worth fighting for.

Usually I enjoy the quiet times we share--they happen rarely in our line of work, especially since Samaritan came on line. But today the silence felt strained, filled with static that kept me from settling into our connection. 

The last few days had placed us at odds. We'd been there before, of course. You can't put two stubborn individuals together in a working partnership like ours and not expect some 'head-butting' to occur. There were days when I wanted to strangle him--usually when he did something risky, or fell back into his secretive ways--and days when I'm sure he probably wanted to return the favor--when I did something that to his mind appeared more reckless than it actually was.

Becoming lovers hadn't changed that aspect of our relationship. We still disagreed, argued, fought our battles, but ultimately came to a compromise without damaging what lay between us. 

We'd wounded each other this time. Drawn blood. Not with bullets or blades, but with words. 

**************

Words are Harold's weapons, more than mine, nuanced with acerbic wit, scathing sarcasm, or deadly certainty. 

This time... 

This time Harold's words had been edged with steel--sharp, and unexpected enough to catch me off guard and lay me open. I'd retaliated with some brutal jabs of my own before I'd realized what had caused him to go on the offensive. 

I'd been blind to the pain he was in. 

The suffering Shane Edwards felt over the loss of his wife had evoked too many memories and parallels to my own life. It had reawakened the grief and thirst for revenge I'd experienced when I lost Jessica and Joss, and the fear that at some point we'd find evidence that would add Shaw to the list of the confirmed dead, as well--a list that bears the stamp of my failures. 

It was easy, _too_ easy, for me to empathize with Edwards--too tempting to let him carry out his plans, when it looked like all he was doing was making the man who had ruined his life pay in kind. 

What he wanted, was justice after all. Old Testament, 'eye for an eye' retribution. 

I _understood_ that end-game. 

I hadn't realized how intimately Harold understood it, too.

******************

The physical act of killing someone isn't difficult. Step 1: Identify your target. Step 2: Pull the trigger. There's an implied civility in confirming guilt before you take Step 2, but it doesn't change the process. 

The CIA never wasted time with questions of guilt or innocence. As an operative, I was a weapon and I aimed where they pointed, until betrayal opened my eyes. I'd like to believe that I've changed, but the truth is, some of that training, that mindset, is still with me. It comes back to haunt me at the damnedest times. 

The death of an innocent, especially a child or a woman, pushes all my buttons. The wrong ones. I lose perspective quickly and fall back into old patterns and habits.

Like I did with Edwards' case.

The downside to taking a life, even getting so far as to have your finger on the trigger and ultimately deciding NOT to go through with the act, is that you have to face the consequences of your actions.

And that's Step 3: the Fallout. 

If you're a psychopath or a paid assassin, you skip step three and move on to your next victim or mark. You sleep well, with no regrets. 

Fallout for the rest of us consists of nightmares, remorse, and attempts at redemption. 

Life, as Harold pointed out, is infinitely complicated.

********************

Edwards had been clever, his plan shrouded and convoluted, his previous vigilantism a red herring that had us questioning whether he was victim or perpetrator right to the very end. Just trying to keep up, to puzzle out what the hell was going on, had us all edgy, the tone of our exchanges, even our banter, taking on a brittle irritability from almost the very beginning. 

Frustration's a poor excuse for not seeing what the case was doing to my partner. 

Finch is a superb actor. I'd seen him play Hayden Price when his Number had come up, so I was prepared, or at least I thought I was, to listen to him run the game on Edwards, posing as a grieving patient. 

What I hadn't anticipated was the genuine, heartbreaking sorrow permeating Harold's voice when he talked about his 'loss'-- _He was my best friend, and in an instant, he was simply gone_ \--or the stumble and flustered recovery when Edwards had speculated about a wife or fiance-- _We broke it off, and that's really all I have to say about that._

I _knew_ about Ingram. And Grace. But I had never _felt_ the depth of the pain their loss had caused Harold the way I did at that moment. Fusco had cracked wise, and I'd gone along with the joke, but my heart wasn't in it. It had almost been a relief to escape to my appointment with Iris...until she nailed me at practically the beginning of our session. It didn't surprise me when she commented that she was sensing something 'dark' about me. What I told her, that I'd met someone that morning who had lost someone and it changed his life, was true, only it wasn't just Edwards I was thinking of when I said that. 

An echo of that pain stuck with me, leaving me unsettled and irritable. I was defensive when Finch asked me later about my session with Iris. I blew him off with some comment about Doctor/Patient confidentiality--as if I hadn't been perched like a fly on the wall during _his_ appointment with Edwards. 

Finch took it stride, or at least I thought he had, but from that point on, there was something festering under the surface. When Harold's digging into Edwards' life revealed his vigilante streak, I made the comment Finch should hire him and take the week off. It was the kind of tongue-in-cheek remark I'd made many times before, but that edge of steel surfaced in his tersely worded reminder that we'd been given Edwards' Number for a reason. 

Throughout the case, Finch held firm to his convictions that there were lives to protect, despite our uncertainties as to who we should be protecting, answering Fusco's perspective that we let Edwards carry out his plans with the fervent insistence that we _couldn't_ sanction murder. 

Vengeance, he'd said, wouldn't bring closure. He had driven the point home, bringing up Carter and Shaw, and Jess indirectly, reminding me of those still open wounds. I countered, stubbornly arguing Edwards was just trying to correct an injustice. Harold's riposte had been unexpected and sharp-- _Don't make the mistake of assuming that you're the only person who's been down this path._

And that's when I truly fucked up. Because while I suspected he'd entertained thoughts of retribution after Ingram had been killed, I didn't really think he'd gone too far down that road; that he'd chosen to find closure in taking up his friend's crusade, instead of instigating a bloodbath.

So I pushed-- _Where did that path take you?_ \--daring him to give me an answer that would prove to me he understood, that we shared the same nightmares.

His response was to risk his own life to stop Edwards, practically planting himself in the line of fire. Baring his own damaged soul to convince the man to stand down. 

Oh, he understood, all right. 

******************

We paused at the point of the walkway that gave us a clear view of the man who'd been the target of Edwards' campaign of revenge. Morris didn't act like a man who had been given his life back. He was twitchy. 

Was it a guilty conscience prompting that restlessness, or the jittery exhaustion left in the wake of an adrenaline surge? He'd come close to buying it the night before. It irritated me that we didn't know. 

Fortunately, I had the good sense to turn my irritation in a direction other than my partner, this time. 

"What about Morris? Did he kill Edwards' wife or not?"

"That's a question between him and his maker," Finch answered calmly. "Perhaps we should follow our own advice and let him go."

"That's not good enough," I pressed. "The Machine's got to know the truth."

"It may, and the truth will likely remain with it. As frustrating as it might seem, some questions may never be answered. But what I do know is this--If Morris is a killer and tries to kill again, we'll be there."

 _'We'll be there.'_ Surprising words from a 'dead' man. Our future, while temporarily in flux, had never held the suggestion of longevity. 

"You seem sure of that." 

"Well, we were promised 'hope,'" he responded. "Despite the lack of evidence of it in recent weeks, I suppose I'm...holding to that covenant."

That seemed to conclude the conversation as far as Finch was concerned. We walked for a while without exchanging another word. Bear seemed satisfied with our ambling pace as it afforded him the chance to stop and sniff and leave his mark on the world.

I didn't share his sense of contentment. The knot in my chest grew heavier and twisted tighter with each step. The disconnection I was feeling was a maddening itch that made me want to tear my skin off.

Finch appeared calm and collected, but he was good at hiding what he really felt, which left me at a loss to determine where we stood. The tension he'd broadcast initially had bled off during our stroll. He seemed almost at peace, which made me perversely angry, given how off balance I was. 

We weren't men who offered apologies easily. Usually we put space between us for a while--an hour, a day, two--and then let whatever small hurt we'd handed out settle like sediment to the bottom of a river. The lives we led, the danger we faced, had us too busy clutching each other to survive the currents that were always pushing us in one direction or another to worry about finding words of forgiveness or explanation. 

This though. This could pull us apart; pull us under. Edwards' words echoed in my head-- _Moving on is not about forgetting or ignoring the past._

Sometimes you had to deal with things. New habits had to replace the old.

The walking path looped back on itself, curving into a sheltered niche with an empty park bench, the high, thick bushes offering privacy. My feet seemed to have a mind of their own, my steps slowing. I pressed the heel of my hand against the elephant sitting on my chest and the words spewed out before I even realized it. 

"About yesterday..."

Finch paused, twisting slightly to study me, quick on the uptake as ever. "It's not the first time we've disagreed on how to handle a Number, John." He dropped his gaze and reached down to rub Bear behind one ear. "I dare say, it won't be the last."

I snagged his elbow and tugged lightly, forcing him to look up at me. "It's not Edwards or Morris I'm concerned about, Harold."

He twitched that sideways smile that wasn't a smile, eyes darkening, gaze going distant for a moment before refocusing on me. "Of course. Apologies are in order. I shouldn't have accused you of mishandling the surveillance on Mr. Edwards. Nor should I have ignored your suspicions regarding Mr. Morris' guilt. You 'see' people much more clearly than I do. I fear I still have a tendency to--"

"Don't!" I hissed, anger churning my gut, the sour tang of bile stinging the back of my throat, dropping my voice into that low octave usually reserved for threatening the scum we encountered. 

Finch stifled a gasp, his startled gaze flicking to his arm and then up to my face. 

My fingers were locked around his elbow, knuckles white with strain. 

I was hurting him.

Just as my ill-considered words had hurt him over the past several days.

Anger morphed instantly to regret and shame. I released him, shifting back several steps, balling my hands into fists at my sides.

Bear whined and sidled closer to Harold. Finch nudged him to the side and took a step forward, eyes narrowed, the telltale worry line between his eyes a deep crevice. "John? What's--"

"You don't have anything to apologize for," I managed to rasp out between clenched teeth. A string of the blackest invectives I'd learned over my years in the Service screamed in my head as I realized I was still broadcasting 'threat', not entreaty. 

Some habits were damn hard to break. 

Brave fool that he is, Finch shifted even closer, frown deepening. Keen eyes searched my face with the same intensity with which he studied his monitors.

A soft catch of breath signaled he'd found his answer. He laid his hand on my chest. Warmth seeped through layers of fabric and skin, reaching inside of me to finally dissolve that stubborn knot of tension and guilt. He looked up, gaze soft with understanding. "Neither do you."

I wished I could believe that. I covered his hand with my own, pressing it against my heart before entwining our fingers. "I pushed you hard in this case."

"And I pushed back." 

"When I asked you where that path had led, I never suspected--"

"That I would have constructed a bomb, placed it in a car, trapped the occupant inside, tortured them with the knowledge their life was in my hands, and come a hair's breath away from pushing the button?"

I didn't flinch, but it was a near thing. 

"I believe I _do_ owe you an apology," Harold murmured. "I sometimes forget how deep your protective instincts run." He shook his head in fond exasperation. "John, not even _you_ can alter time. I made that choice years ago. You didn't even know me then."

"If I had, I would have stopped you."

"And done the deed yourself?" He shook his head. Extricating his hand from mine with a gentle squeeze, he reached up to touch my face, a bare drag of fingertips across stubble. "If you had been the instrument of my revenge..." his expression grew grim, "there would still be blood on my hands, and I would have made you an accomplice to my guilt."

"I've killed before, for far less honorable reasons."

"I know." The heartbreak in his voice wasn't for himself.

"I never wanted this for you. If I'd known--"

"Nothing I've ever done or said would have led you to believe I was capable of murder," he said softly. 

It was true. I knew he had a ruthless streak. You didn't get to be a billionaire without one. And I'd been in his ear when he'd delivered the 'kill shot' to Keller, the Virtanen Pharmaceuticals CEO, Harold's voice as cold as ice and oh, so satisfied, as he'd spelled out how he had financially ruined the man.

But I had also seen his horror of violence. His continuing refusal to pick up a weapon, even in self-defense. His tendency to withhold judging our Numbers as victim or perpetrator until the evidence was conclusive. The forgiveness he extended to Root. 

He wasn't a saint. He was a man who had lost so much, but he'd buried that pain, at least I thought he had, in the work. In trying to help people. I should have seen past the smokescreen to the fire inside, because it was the same flame that burned unquenched inside of me. 

It was the reason he understood me so well. 

"'Revenge is a dish best served cold,'" he murmured. Harold closed his eyes for a moment, lips pressed together, then he shook his head. "I'm not proud of that time in my life." 

He gave Bear's leash a light tug and led him over to the bench, settling on it and encouraging the Malinois to lie at his feet. My own feet seemed like they were encased in the cement of the path, keeping me locked in place.

"I wanted to destroy them all," he said quietly, gaze fixed on the ground. "Every one of them that had been complicit in Nathan's death. Everyone who had betrayed us. That desire, crystalline in its purity got me through the surgeries...helped me ignore the physical pain. I pulled my losses inside of me, froze the memories of Nathan's last words, Grace's tears, so they'd be with me forever. They were the foundation for my plans of retribution. For my revenge."

He raised his head and met my gaze without apology. "Alicia Corwin was my first target."

***************

I had to stop myself from telling him that it was a shame he hadn't succeeded in taking her out. I held no love for Corwin. She had been the NSA liaison who had given us the mission to Ordos. Mark Snow had been the one to order me to 'dispose' of my partner, Kara, but I'd always known the command had come from higher up. 

If she was the one Finch had trapped in the car...well, wasn't it ironic she died in one, anyway. 

Except...

It had been Harold's car she had died in...his almost-victim murdered right in front of him. No wonder Harold had been too shocked to offer even a token resistance to Root's plans. 

I crossed to the bench and sat down beside him. I took his free hand, turned it over in mine. 

Harold's hands have always intrigued me. At first glance, they're the hands of a billionaire, manicured and soft, missing the heavy calluses of 'honest' labor. Look closer; that's when you realize they're hands as capable of brandishing a welding torch as cradling a fragile teacup. 

They're the tools of a brilliant mind. The hands of an engineer bearing the subtle damage earned from years of building his own computer systems from the inside-out--nicks and gouges from sharp metal edges or a slipped screwdriver, tiny burn scars from molten solder. The hands of a linguist who spoke a digital language few in the world could understand, that deftly translated the visions sparking through firing synapses to patterns and code. The hands of a man of learning who's depth of knowledge could be read in the faint raised lines of paper cuts, evidence of his passion for the feel of aged paper and embossed leather.

I ghosted the pad of my thumb across his palm, tracing the lifeline; teasing across the whorls of sensitive fingertips, prompting Harold to close his hand around mine and squeeze gently.

There's a surprising strength in those hands--strength that had pulled me out the gutter and shepherded me to a new life. They were the hands that held me when I was exhausted, stitched up my wounds when I was injured. 

Made love to me.

His fingers aren't the long slender digits of a master pianist, but they play a computer keyboard--and me--like a virtuoso. Each time he touches me, my skin remembers the first time he feathered those deft fingers down my throat, writing an elegant code of desire that matched the passion in his eyes. My body rejoices in the shudders evoked by the long slow stroke of a fingertip the length of my throbbing cock, and carries the imprint of bruises left by fingers that clutched me close at the peak of climax. 

It seemed impossible to imagine that those hands that remind me I'm alive, and loved, had been wrapped around the trigger of an explosive, ready to deal out death. 

And yet, by his own admission, not so impossible after all.

*******************

"What stopped you?"

It wasn't a question I should have asked. He'd already said enough. I should have respected his privacy. He'd found some peace with the memories and I should have left it at that. Revenge, and the aftermath, was personal. I knew that better than most.

But I had raced toward that same cliff edge and let momentum carry me over more times that I wanted to admit. I wanted to understand how he'd managed to apply the brakes.

Harold stared down at our entwined fingers. "I realized I was doing exactly what I had told Nathan we _couldn't_ do," he said quietly. "Playing God."

He raised his head and stared off into the distance, his voice almost a whisper. "The ferry bombing destroyed my world. I disconnected myself from everything except my obsession for revenge. That day...I was sitting there with the detonator in my hand, listening to Alicia, certain she was lying...there was a phone ringing incessantly..." He shook his head. "And I felt the wind on my face. Cold. Touched with moisture. 

"It was the first time I remembered really feeling _anything_ since Nathan's death. I realized then that the world _hadn't_ stopped spinning. The sun rose and set everyday. The seasons had changed. Couples were falling in love. Babies were being born. People were...dying. Life and loss was everywhere. 

"I let myself really listen to her. Alicia hadn't known they'd planned to kill Nathan. She said--" 

He broke off for a moment, throat working. "She said everything they'd done was to make the world a safer place, but they'd strayed from the path. She regretted her part in things, but she couldn't see a way out. Alicia wasn't a player in the game. She was a pawn, being moved by other hands."

He twisted a little to look at me. His eyes were filled with brittle acceptance. "Killing her, or any of the others wouldn't have changed anything...except me. _I_ would have strayed from the path. That's what the Machine was trying to tell me."

I plucked the clue to that out of one of his earlier comments. "The ringing telephone..." 

He nodded. "I never gave the Machine a voice. But it found a way to speak to me. To remind me of something I'd once tried to teach it. That people aren't pieces on a chessboard. They aren't something that can be sacrificed, because each life has value. The lesson I wanted it to learn, was that anyone who looks on the world as if it was a game of chess deserves to lose." 

He shrugged. "I'd already lost enough. I had work I could still do. Numbers to help in Nathan's memory. So I opened the locks on the car and let her go."

"Just like that."

"Well, I admit a part of me hoped that their deeds would ultimately catch up with them." He twitched that sideways smile again, eyes dark with remorse. "And they have. Alicia, Denton Weeks, Special Counsel...so many others...they all paid with their lives. All because of their association with the Machine...and me."

I wasn't about to let him take on those deaths. "You weren't responsible--"

"Not directly, no. But we carry a debt for the dead. The only way I can repay it, is to stay on the path."

Holding to a moral code. To find answers, not sit in judgment. Not an easy task, or a simple journey. Not with Numbers like Edwards. Not with Samaritan breathing down our necks. "And when the pavement crumbles under your feet?"

He gave my hand a firm squeeze, and leaned against my shoulder. The connection opened up between us, flowing both ways. Steady. 

He squeezed my hand again. "That's why you travel it with a partner," he murmured. "So that when you lose your balance, you have someone to hang on to."

 

***********************

Attributions:

Dialogue segments lifted intact, without intent of copyright infringement, from POI episode _Karma_ (S4, E17)

Additional characters, quotes or references from other POI episodes also used without intent of copyright infringement.

“I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.” -- Chaim Potok, _The Chosen_

“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.” --Nicholas Sparks, _The Notebook_


End file.
